Sports

Bezzecchi Wins Qatar GP, Marquez Loses Chance at Title

By Al Jazeera Staff

Marco Bezzecchi of Aprilia won the Qatar Grand Prix, with Marc Marquez of Ducati finishing second. The race took place in Lusail as motorsport returned to Qatar after a delay caused by the United States‑Israel war on Iran. Marquez had won the sprint race and was hoping to retain his title, but he needed his closest rival, Jorge Martin, to finish without points. Bezzecchi’s victory, his sixth of the season, cut the gap between him and Marquez to 74 points. The Italian, who is third in the championship standings, now has no realistic chance of winning his first world title because the points gap equals the number of points still available. Bezzecchi had crashed out of the sprint race on Saturday while attempting to overtake Marquez, but he returned to win on Sunday. “It feels amazing,” he said after the race. “I’m very happy. It was the performance we deserved.” He added that the weekend had been fantastic and that bouncing back from the crash made the win even better. Jorge Martin, who had started 11th on the grid, finished third after a strong weekend, his first race since recovering from a broken right wrist. He received a warm round of applause from his team for keeping the title race alive. Martin, Bezzecchi’s teammate at Aprilia, finished seventh and remains in contention, though he is 60 points behind the leaders with two race weekends remaining. Marquez could still claim a record‑equalling eighth premier class title if he finishes two points ahead of Martin in the Portimão sprint in two weeks. “My strategy was just to try to manage the race for the first five laps,” Marquez said. “I saw that in one part of the race, I was super fast, but I knew that riding on that riding style, I was eating the front tyre. Third position would have been OK, but I saw that Raul Fernandez was struggling, so you never know. I attack and four points more.” Fernandez finished third at Qatar’s MotoGP, marking the return of major motorsport to the region for the first time since the war on Iran began.